Tag: American Honey

The Best Movies of 2016

Conventional wisdom would have it that 2016 was an awful year. Gene Wilder, David Bowie, Prince and many more stars all passed away. Shootings at night clubs and a fire at an Oakland venue sent shockwaves through communities and brought into question where we as Americans can feel safe. And of course the election results were not only the opposite of what I would’ve hoped for, but they polarized the nation so deeply that facts and freedom seem to hang in the balance.

Since the election results, I’ve been far more guarded about projecting what I believe. What’s the use when either no one wants to hear a word, or it will only echo around in a bubble of shared values?

The same could be said of movies. I’m sure for many culture writers it’s tempting to rank the most “relevant” movies and present them as “best.” It would be films that aren’t so much “good” as they are reflections of the writer’s worldview and what they say about 2016 today (somehow I feel “Sausage Party” wouldn’t do so great on that list). But when I think about the consequences of writing that sort of list in the wake of the election, I ultimately have very little interest. I’d rather present a list of the movies I would most recommend to anyone right now and leave the rest for the would-be pundits.

And yet these movies do reflect America and 2016 better than I would’ve imagined when I penciled each into a working list. You could place these films literally on a map of the US and find unique swaths and identities represented across the board. They’ve all come from a new class of elite directors and artists rather than the auteurist veterans who have been shaping the conversation for decades. And best of all, they’ve carried meaning and value for me both before and after the election. How we interpret them may evolve, but their texts and their emotional power remain unchanged. Continue reading “The Best Movies of 2016”

American Honey

Andrea Arnold’s youth odyssey and road trip across Middle America is one of the finest of the year.

american_honey_posterAndrea Arnold’s “American Honey” takes viewers on a remarkable odyssey of youth and Americana. It’s alternatively visionary, beautiful, ugly, celebratory and harrowing in its tour across country with a group of teenagers. Arnold (“Fish Tank“) sees them as strays looking for a home and finding it wherever they are, and watching their journey in this nearly three hour epic is absolutely rapturous.

Arnold’s Queen of Middle America is Star (the wonderful newcomer Sasha Lane), who opens the film fishing a discarded and rotting chicken out of a dumpster for a pair of kids’ dinner. Yum. “Are we invisible,” she screams at passing drivers refusing to accept them as hitchhikers. She’s not wrong, and it’s truly revelatory to see that there are kids who live and survive like this, operating in a whole other world apart from, not just people who live on the coasts and in big cities, but those who live within these small communities and see gems like Star as outcasts.

In the Target across from where Star tries to hitchhike, she spots a van blaring rap music and a teen mooning his ass out the window. Inside is Jake (Shia LaBeouf); they recognize each other, but it’s never explained from where. Jake has a rat tail braid down to his shoulders and wears suspenders and a dress shirt like an old-school mobster. He leaps onto a counter as a Rihanna song starts playing over the intercom. “We found love in a hopeless place,” a familiar anthem, but truly fitting here.

Star, a mixed-race girl with tattoos, a ratty tank top and dirty, unkempt dreadlocks, cares for two kids, but they’re not her own. With an invite from Jake and a job offer, she runs away from her responsibilities to join a traveling operation of selling magazines door to door. Her boss Krystal (Riley Keough) has little patience for anyone just looking for a joy ride. Star and about 10 other teens ride around in a cramped van, staying at motels along the road and selling magazines in a new town each week. They party hard, but they make their money, and if Star can’t keep up, she’ll be booted from the group. In one scene Krystal answers her motel door naked with an open man’s dress shirt, sizing up the newcomer with a DGAF look that shows she’s boss. Meanwhile the formerly fun loving and rowdy Jake has been reduced to Krystal’s pet, slathering moisturizer on her legs like a slave. Continue reading “American Honey”